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What Child Is This?: A Christmas Story
Not everyone is lucky at Christmas. Some people would call 16-year-old Liz Kitchell and her family truly fortunate, but it doesn't feel that way to her. It seems that only a miracle can give 8-year-old Katie her holiday wish. She wants a family, something she does not have as a foster child. As for 17-year-old Matt, he too is in a foster home and is finally letting himself feel a sense of belonging. When he allows himself to do a good deed for Katie, he doesn't realize what would happen. Is the spirit of Christmas strong enough to grant the impossible?
160 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published November 1, 1990
35 people are currently reading
488 people want to read
About the author
Caroline B. Cooney
129 books1,765 followersCaroline Cooney knew in sixth grade that she wanted to be a writer when "the best teacher I ever had in my life" made writing her main focus. "He used to rip off covers from The New Yorker and pass them around and make us write a short story on whichever cover we got. I started writing then and never stopped!"
When her children were young, Caroline started writing books for young people -- with remarkable results. She began to sell stories to Seventeen magazine and soon after began writing books. Suspense novels are her favorites to read and write. "In a suspense novel, you can count on action."
To keep her stories realistic, Caroline visits many schools outside of her area, learning more about teenagers all the time. She often organizes what she calls a "plotting game," in which students work together to create plots for stories. Caroline lives in Westbrook, Connecticut and when she's not writing she volunteers at a hospital, plays piano for the school musicals and daydreams!
- Scholastic.com
When her children were young, Caroline started writing books for young people -- with remarkable results. She began to sell stories to Seventeen magazine and soon after began writing books. Suspense novels are her favorites to read and write. "In a suspense novel, you can count on action."
To keep her stories realistic, Caroline visits many schools outside of her area, learning more about teenagers all the time. She often organizes what she calls a "plotting game," in which students work together to create plots for stories. Caroline lives in Westbrook, Connecticut and when she's not writing she volunteers at a hospital, plays piano for the school musicals and daydreams!
- Scholastic.com
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 167 reviews
December 13, 2022
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting light
A little girl in foster care puts a wish on a tree for a family. Caroline B. Cooney tells us Katie's story along with that of many others in the little town. There is an older boy in Katie's foster home named Matt. He has so much hurt and rage inside that he hurts. Your heart will break as you contemplate the life these little ones have lived. The other kids at school have no idea how richly blessed they are in their stable households. Will Katie get her Christmas wish? Each chapter has a snippet from a Christmas carol as a heading. There is an index in the back to match each line up with the song it belongs to. I have been a Caroline B. Cooney fan ever since I read Before She Was Helen. Perhaps reading this book will make you a fan just as I am.
The everlasting light
A little girl in foster care puts a wish on a tree for a family. Caroline B. Cooney tells us Katie's story along with that of many others in the little town. There is an older boy in Katie's foster home named Matt. He has so much hurt and rage inside that he hurts. Your heart will break as you contemplate the life these little ones have lived. The other kids at school have no idea how richly blessed they are in their stable households. Will Katie get her Christmas wish? Each chapter has a snippet from a Christmas carol as a heading. There is an index in the back to match each line up with the song it belongs to. I have been a Caroline B. Cooney fan ever since I read Before She Was Helen. Perhaps reading this book will make you a fan just as I am.
January 28, 2025
2023 Re-Read: Ditto everything I said in 2022. Add in dealing with my Christmas-loving mother being hospitalized, and I broke down in tears even more often than before.
***
2022 Re-Read: I'm still not jaded enough to keep from breaking down in tears at parts of this book. There's something about its gentleness--its tenderness, its sincerity--that truly moves me.
***
2021 Re-Read: A perennial favorite, I just can't help myself.
***
2019 Re-Read: Still strikes just the right cord for me. Some references are a bit dated, but the emotions behind the characters' decisions ring true.
***
This is my favorite book to re-read around Christmas. And re-read it I did! It still hasn't lost its sparkle for me. Not overly-religious, just a little sappy--a quick delicious holiday treat!
***
2022 Re-Read: I'm still not jaded enough to keep from breaking down in tears at parts of this book. There's something about its gentleness--its tenderness, its sincerity--that truly moves me.
***
2021 Re-Read: A perennial favorite, I just can't help myself.
***
2019 Re-Read: Still strikes just the right cord for me. Some references are a bit dated, but the emotions behind the characters' decisions ring true.
***
This is my favorite book to re-read around Christmas. And re-read it I did! It still hasn't lost its sparkle for me. Not overly-religious, just a little sappy--a quick delicious holiday treat!
April 6, 2009
Even having read this about seven or so times, I never get tired of it. The decision to head chapters with song lines instead of numbers gives each snippet a different personality. The characters are beautifully real. Cooney skirts the edges of religion with just enough passion to ask the question of Christmas and then leave the reader alone with his or her answer; there are no heavy-handed decisions either way here. A wonderful tale of Hope, one of the greatest gifts of all.
December 24, 2012
“What Child is This” is an adorable Christmas story. The story alternates chapters between three 16 year old teens. Liz’s family is going all out this year for Christmas, but seems to have lost the true meaning after the death of her niece. Tack’s father runs the local inn and “fancy restaurant”. His youth group has placed a Christmas tree in the restaurant where local needy and foster kids can hang their “wish bell” on it. Matt is foster child and thinks he has finally found a family that could maybe adopt him. All his eight year old foster sister, Kate, wants for Christmas is a real family. Matt thinks he is doing her a good deed by writing this on one of the bells for the wish tree. This book reminds the reader of what the true meaning of Christmas is all about.
What Child is This was published in 1999 and is a YA Christian, fiction book. At work every year, I put it on for my Christmas display of book. I have never read it until this year when I was drawn to it for some reason. It is a very quick read (150 pages). Loved this little book! It reminded me of a Hallmark Movie. I am surprised they have not made it into a movie. I think it is one of my new holiday favorites! I
What Child is This was published in 1999 and is a YA Christian, fiction book. At work every year, I put it on for my Christmas display of book. I have never read it until this year when I was drawn to it for some reason. It is a very quick read (150 pages). Loved this little book! It reminded me of a Hallmark Movie. I am surprised they have not made it into a movie. I think it is one of my new holiday favorites! I
February 4, 2024
2.5 stars. The ending was good, but the rest of the book was depressing.
December 23, 2018
2.5 stars
The tone of the book is very somber, but the ending was nice, if a little predictable. I liked that the chapter headings were verses from Christmas carols.
The tone of the book is very somber, but the ending was nice, if a little predictable. I liked that the chapter headings were verses from Christmas carols.
December 2, 2015
This book is an easy read. I enjoyed it although I think that the ending was too predictable.
December 18, 2024
For anyone who ever needed hope in their life, this is a story for you. This is a book I pull out every Christmas season, because, well, I think the message is incredibly important. You won't find any overt religious messages here, but you'll find characters struggling for meaning and looking for answers. It's not an in-your-face struggle, but there's nonetheless a sense of reality that makes me truly feel the reason for the season. Dork that I am, I maintain a list of my top 20 all-time favorite books and "What Child Is This" occupies the number three spot. Yes, three, which is high up in my book. Take a moment to ponder what hope really means, why it's needed and where it really can be found. This is one close to my heart.
December 23, 2011
Get out the tissues, I cried most of the way through. The message is clear, foster kids need families too. The story is centered on two foster children that have had lives full of disappointments and sadness. Both have known what it means to be rejected. At one point, the older foster boy thinks, "Who is going to want to adopt an 8 year old girl?" I'm afraid that his question reflects reality, who wants older children? Unfortunately, not enough people or the people in the story that need the money, but don't have enough love to give.
December 27, 2022
I read this book every year at Christmas. Its heart warming, quick, well-written, and beautiful. I look forward to reading next Christmas.
December 10, 2009
interesting view of children who are in foster care- about dreams and hopes and giving during the Christmas season- with unselfishness-
July 31, 2016
Simply beautiful Christmas story!
*Tissue Alert*
*Tissue Alert*
December 29, 2017
An easy, quick read, but the message is important. I first read this book 20 years ago and have pulled it out almost every Christmas since. It still makes me cry every time.
December 16, 2015
What a happy little Christmas story!
January 8, 2022
You know how it's hard to answer the 'What's your favorite book?' question...this may be it for me. And it's tied up with so many other aspects of reading a book - where you first read it, what was happening in your life at the time, your expectations (or lack of), etc. etc. It was Thanksgiving weekend in 2000 and we were at a mall (back when they were hustling and bustling and vibrant) in Nashville. My teen-aged daughter was off shopping (probably J.Crew) and my husband had our two oldest boys at a game (Warhammer) store. I (feeling exhausted and sick, pregnant with #6) sat on the floor with all the coats and packages in the children's section of a bookstore while my 5 and 2 year old read and played. I picked up 'What Child Is This' off a display and began to read. Later when we left the store I bought it so I could take it home to finish. I've read it most years since at Christmas time. It's a perfect length for a busy time and has wonderful things to say about finding true meaning in the holiday. I think it might be one of the first books I read that was written from several perspectives (as they almost all are these days) and in this case the technique was utilized so well to explore the inner turmoil of the young people in the story. The compassion it inspires is convicting and so humanizes the characters and the challenges that each faces in their own lives. Even after multiple reads I still cry happy tears at the end and who doesn't love a good emotional cleansing at Christmas :)
October 13, 2021
For some, Christmas is getting the desire of one's heart. For Katie, an eight-year-old foster child, all she really wants for Christmas is a family. A real family, but is this realistic?
Her foster brother, Matt, puts a wishing tree bell with her Christmas wish on one of the local wishing trees, all the while knowing that it won't happen. For the first time since he entered the foster care system, his foster family has made him care. When she arrives, he finds he wants her happiness and makes a fateful decision to do this.
Several other teens are having their own issues with (the meaning of) Christmas. Liz's family has the totally secular vision, and Tack's family only wants to help with the wishing trees placed in their restaurant granting "small" gift requests like Barbie dolls and footballs. How will their actions affect the story?
Poignant and thoughtful story for kids and adults...may cause a few moments of weeping.
Her foster brother, Matt, puts a wishing tree bell with her Christmas wish on one of the local wishing trees, all the while knowing that it won't happen. For the first time since he entered the foster care system, his foster family has made him care. When she arrives, he finds he wants her happiness and makes a fateful decision to do this.
Several other teens are having their own issues with (the meaning of) Christmas. Liz's family has the totally secular vision, and Tack's family only wants to help with the wishing trees placed in their restaurant granting "small" gift requests like Barbie dolls and footballs. How will their actions affect the story?
Poignant and thoughtful story for kids and adults...may cause a few moments of weeping.
September 19, 2021
This was actually a bit of a sad little book. It was a little slow to start out, but once we met Katie, age 8, the little foster child who just wanted a family for Christmas, I became very caught up in the story. The whole part about the bells hung on the tree at the restaurant, with children's name and age and what they wanted for Christmas, made me long for the Christmas season to arrive so we can pull some wishes off a tree and buy gifts for those children.
I don't think I'd read anything by this author before, but I love her writing, with lines like "He felt enormously tired, as if he were an autumn leaf and his season were over." And towards the end I teared up quite a bit. But the sad little book ended on a happy note.
I don't think I'd read anything by this author before, but I love her writing, with lines like "He felt enormously tired, as if he were an autumn leaf and his season were over." And towards the end I teared up quite a bit. But the sad little book ended on a happy note.
June 17, 2013
DON'T THROW AWAY CHRISTMAS WISHES--OR CHILDREN!
I found this book interesting, fast and easy to read, but must confess that I had not considered the plight of many foster children and foster parents. Especially poignant during a holiday season I found the story somewhat disjointed, since there were no real chapters, but many short segments--each introduced by a line from a Christmas carol. Sections shifted focus from one teenager (or child or adult) to another, so it requires literary flexibility. Desite the lack of a clearcut protagonist, I think it would make a good TV movie.
As the book jacket proclaims: the kids desire so much (a ski trip, expensive sneakers, nothing less than a new and permanent family, and maternal closure for a grieving older sister). Yet the adults who control these kids' lives leave so much to be desired: Liz' parents--clueless about the true meaning of Christmas--honestly love her, but only wish to impress the World, so they set poor examples of compasison and charity. Perhaps a few fathers are as close to perfect as Mr. Knight, but I feel that most congregations would respond the same way if confronted by a Christmas Eve disaster--even that of a stranger. Let your heart go out to the needy children in the community--this book is an inspiration to churches and social agencies to bring joy to orphans, to the poor in our ocmmunities and to foster kids with no home to call their own. The ending satisfies..
(December 28, 2011. I welcome dialogue with teachers.)
I found this book interesting, fast and easy to read, but must confess that I had not considered the plight of many foster children and foster parents. Especially poignant during a holiday season I found the story somewhat disjointed, since there were no real chapters, but many short segments--each introduced by a line from a Christmas carol. Sections shifted focus from one teenager (or child or adult) to another, so it requires literary flexibility. Desite the lack of a clearcut protagonist, I think it would make a good TV movie.
As the book jacket proclaims: the kids desire so much (a ski trip, expensive sneakers, nothing less than a new and permanent family, and maternal closure for a grieving older sister). Yet the adults who control these kids' lives leave so much to be desired: Liz' parents--clueless about the true meaning of Christmas--honestly love her, but only wish to impress the World, so they set poor examples of compasison and charity. Perhaps a few fathers are as close to perfect as Mr. Knight, but I feel that most congregations would respond the same way if confronted by a Christmas Eve disaster--even that of a stranger. Let your heart go out to the needy children in the community--this book is an inspiration to churches and social agencies to bring joy to orphans, to the poor in our ocmmunities and to foster kids with no home to call their own. The ending satisfies..
(December 28, 2011. I welcome dialogue with teachers.)
November 19, 2013
Deckle is beautiful on Christmas cards with its fluffy, snow-like edge. But a torn edge in this book leads to a foster child's dashed hopes. And if ever those hopes were to come back together,
it would take timing as perfect as formed Jesus Christ's nativity.
Caroline Cooney paints two foster children's stories one scene, one thought at a time, peering for a moment through one character's perspective, then the next. The children with birth families, the foster children, the social worker, the foster parents, and the parents who have only their own birth children. And it seems that for the foster children, the foster care system can only lead to false hope, hurt, and then cynicism. Same for their social worker.
On the Christmas tree in a restaurant hang the Christmas gift wishes of local kids. When Katie asks her social worker to write her wish for a family, she's told to think smaller, for Christmas is about little things and not big things.
Somehow Katie's big wish still makes it to a restaurant tree, and her innocence is mocked as selfish audacity, and literally ripped into four fuzzy-edged pieces. Who would be so audacious as to grant Katie's wish?
it would take timing as perfect as formed Jesus Christ's nativity.
Caroline Cooney paints two foster children's stories one scene, one thought at a time, peering for a moment through one character's perspective, then the next. The children with birth families, the foster children, the social worker, the foster parents, and the parents who have only their own birth children. And it seems that for the foster children, the foster care system can only lead to false hope, hurt, and then cynicism. Same for their social worker.
On the Christmas tree in a restaurant hang the Christmas gift wishes of local kids. When Katie asks her social worker to write her wish for a family, she's told to think smaller, for Christmas is about little things and not big things.
Somehow Katie's big wish still makes it to a restaurant tree, and her innocence is mocked as selfish audacity, and literally ripped into four fuzzy-edged pieces. Who would be so audacious as to grant Katie's wish?
January 2, 2014
I started this book after Christmas even though this is a Christmas story. It had been in my TBR pile for way too long, and I was not going to go another year without reading it. "What Child Is This?" is a wonderfully written story about four very different kids who are all looking for hope, belonging, and the meaning of Christmas. Be prepared to have your heartstrings tugged on, and perhaps have some tissues handy if you're going to read this book...on her Christmas bell, Katie, age 8, wants a family. See what I mean?
November 14, 2015
I read the book, What Child Is This?, by Caroline B. Cooney. It was about two foster children who live with a family. Each foster children gets to pick a present they want, they write it on special paper, and then put them on Christmas Tree's in stores. One of the foster children named Katie sneaks a second paper. On it, the other foster child named Matt who was older, wrote that Katie wanted a family for Christmas. They were only supposed to chose little presents. When Christmas rolls around, do they get their wishes? It was a really good and special book!! It was a real page turner!!!!
December 18, 2009
this was the most awful book i have ever read. and all you pplz out there who like it there is something wrong with you brain! if i could give it 0 stars i would. if i could give it negative eighty two stars i would! don't EVER read this book EVER! unless you like boring, pointless, completely not-creative book in the world! it is the only book i didn't like one bit! and i had to read it for a book report it was awful.
December 23, 2010
I have to admit that I really enjoyed this book. It is a little sappy and predictable, but it was a very sweet and hopeful christmas story. I am glad I picked it up. I think it is a great story about hope and love and people trying to find the true meaning of Christmas and life. I enjoyed the way it was written, with the song titles for chapter headings as well. Very sweet and a feel good story. It made me think as well and reevaluate myself.
December 27, 2011
Nice, warm, fuzzy Christmas read about making wishes and hoping they come true. Also, I enjoyed thinking about how we perceive others isn't always accurate. I found the Kitchell parents to be horrible but was so glad their daughter, Liz had a heart. In the end, I was so glad Katie, the foster girl who wished for a family found one. Very soap-operish but nice to read at Christmas-time!
The free shelf at the library provided me with another great book!
The free shelf at the library provided me with another great book!
June 4, 2012
I want to say that I really enjoyed this book. It is very good Christmas story about a little girl who want a family. It made me to think about my self. The message of this book was very clear.For me, the BEST book I've read all year! I was so moved by how everyone who wanted to do good got the opportunity, and they took the opportunities to do the right things. I would recomed to my friends to read this book because this book is incredible awesome book.
December 18, 2008
For me, the BEST book I've read all year! I was so moved by how everyone who wanted to do good got the opportunity, and they took the opportunities to do the right thing. Those in pain take steps toward healing and all in one hideous disaster, the blessings of love and hope imerge and conquer despair for so many. I wept and rejoiced!
June 4, 2012
The book ''What child is this'' is a interesting book with a special idea. I like that the Katie's dream to have a family become real. This book tell me that what is not posible for peaple is posible for God . I like so much the end of this book that give me hope to belive that my dreams can ge posible but if I will wait.
December 13, 2012
I am a Caroline Cooney fan. However, this one was somewhat sugar-coated and a little too predictable. That said it very much got me in the Christmas mood. I will simply overlook the fact that I know someone who has been trying to adopt a foster child for four years without success and bask in the good feelings generated by the possibilities of this story.
January 13, 2013
What Child is This? is a wonderful book that pulls on the heartstrings but maintains a good balance of reality as it presents the lives of children who are looking for a place to belong. The Christmas story is woven in the plot smoothly from the bells on the tree to the pageant at the conclusion. This book works as a read-aloud in the middle school classroom. A great, touching read!
December 10, 2013
Filled with the true meaning of Christmas, follow real characters through their path to discovering what this wonderful time of year is, and the most important thing; family and love. It's not about the size of the gift, but the meaning behind it. And this story really shows you that even the smallest kindness can be a gift, and the biggest, best gift of all is the gift of love and hope
Displaying 1 - 30 of 167 reviews